Madeleine Burt

Artist, Teacher

Archived

Approved: 23.04.2010

In recent years, Madeleine Burt's work has explored themes related to separation and loss, and to preservation. In her latest series of work, she continues to comment on these areas by looking at examples of traditional lace production, the industry that Nottingham was founded on, and at moth specimens, an insect associated with the destruction of fabric.

Artist Statement

In recent years, Madeleine Burt's work has explored themes related to separation and loss, and to preservation. In her latest series of work, she continues to comment on these areas by looking at examples of traditional lace production, the industry that Nottingham was founded on, and at moth specimens, an insect associated with the destruction of fabric.
Governmental cuts are affecting our ability to preserve and showcase our arts and heritage. In recent years, local museums relating to the Nottingham textile trade and industry have closed; and other cultural and historical spaces are severely threatened. These changes are symptomatic of changes nationwide: a slow and steady demise of our social and cultural identity; and an apathetic, disillusioned public.
By referencing samples of locally produced lace from Nottingham Trent University's Lace Archive and The Cluny Factory in Ilkeston, and by referencing moth specimens from Wollaton Hall's Natural History Museum Archive, Madeleine's work brings together artefacts that, so far, have been successfully selected and preserved for generations. Her work prompts some fundamental questions: if only some things can be preserved for the future, then what should we select? If, we have to discard certain parts of history, then what is dispensable?
Madeleine Burt's interest in what endures in life, what changes or is changed, and what is lost along the way, was also explored in her earlier Waterbaby Series, which was based on four baby bird skeletons uncovered from behind a boarded-up chimney breast. The poignant beauty of the skeletons had a power that seemed greater and of more subsequence, somehow, than if the infant birds had lived. They serve as a reminder of unfulfilled potential; of the peculiar beauty found in things perished; and of the sadness and power of altered states.